Electronic commerce (E-commerce) websites are known in the art which allow a user to view and purchase products and services in an online marketplace, with products and services listed on a website. A simple E-commerce website is AMAZON.COM with a “Buy it Now” feature, with items only able to be purchased for one static price, unless there is a sale or the user has a promotional (“promo”) code for reducing the price.
Other E-commerce websites conduct auctions on items, allowing multiple users to bid on and win items. EBAY.COM uses a straight auction, such that a seller lists an item for sale, and the highest bidder at the end of the auction wins. DEALDASH.COM uses a token auction, by which users pay for tokens and use the tokens to bid for items. TOPHATTER.COM has auctions which last a short time, such as 90 seconds, with the highest bidder at the end of the brief auction winning the item. However, none of these E-commerce websites take into account the possibility of automatically adjusting the price so that the price will fall into a preferable price range or will rise and thus creating an urgency to buy.
Straight auctions have something similar with regard to creating an urgency to buy a product. For example, U.S. Published Application No. 2014/0067582 A1 discloses an auction system which sets a timer to measure how long a bidder is a highest bidder, and then gives incentives or rewards to a bidder depending on the length of time the bidder is a highest bidder. Accordingly, the prospect of rewards separate from the bidding process encourages bidding to be a highest bidder. However, the urgency to bid or to buy is created only if someone else is bidding against the current bidder or buyer. Such known E-commerce and auction websites cannot manipulate the prices and lack aspects for gamification of the auction process.